{"id":22498,"date":"2011-09-13T09:24:23","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T13:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=22498"},"modified":"2014-05-02T07:55:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T11:55:29","slug":"impressed-by-doug-fords-backroom-vision-for-the-toronto-port-lands-take-a-look-at-mayor-bert-xanadus-vision-for-the-toronto-islands-the-islands-in-my-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2011\/09\/13\/impressed-by-doug-fords-backroom-vision-for-the-toronto-port-lands-take-a-look-at-mayor-bert-xanadus-vision-for-the-toronto-islands-the-islands-in-my-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Impressed by Doug Ford’s backroom vision for the Toronto Port Lands? Take a look at Mayor Bert Xanadu’s vision for the Toronto Islands: “The Islands in my Brain.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

EDITOR<\/strong>: It’s circa 1973. Bert Xanadu is the Mayor of Toronto and owner of the Imperial Six cinemas on Yonge Street. Mayor Xanadu has been governing from his twitter account<\/a> over the last two years and now a regular series of posts straight out of 1973 and into the Toronto fray. His first column was on banning pedestrians from Yonge Street<\/a>. Here he’s back in the fray, ensuring that the Port Lands mega project doesn’t get all the spotlight. Photo by Sebastian Bergman<\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"We have, in this marvellous City of Toronto, a public asset so magnificent in its nascent potential, so well-meaning in its character, so narcotic in its ability to entice people to lie down, that it has no international rival, save for those cities that also have islands.<\/p>\n

I am speaking, of course, of the Toronto Islands Park, more commonly known in local parlance as \u2018the Island\u2019 (Toronto being still admirably spartan in its civic monikers, e.g. \u2018the Museum\u2019 and \u2018the Art Gallery\u2019).<\/p>\n

I think all right-thinking men would agree with me when I say, as I am now doing, that despite the fond position the Island holds in the bosoms of Torontonians, it is in sore need of re-do.<\/p>\n

When I was a lad in the 1920\u2019s, the Island was like what one might imagine as the horticultural love child of Frederick Law Olmstead and Greta Garbo, a fantastical floating lawn of entertainment and class warfare, of sand and sermons, of hypnotic British patriotism and hoochie coochie outbursts.<\/p>\n

All that could be eaten or drunk, from racoon-on-a-stick to Boer Lemonade, was there for the buying, along with the enticements of a cinema (my Uncle Charlie\u2019s Dominion Nudie Zoopraxographical Hall), the Moldavian Labourers\u2019 Lacrosse Pitch, the Redundant Circuit Promenade and the controversial Co-Minglers Ankle Bath. On any given steamy August Saturday in those times, the only Torontonians NOT on the Island were the jailed, the veiled and the failed.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t deny that it also throbbed with a heady maritime sexual power. Fortunately, the throbbing was obscured by Christian fabrics and well-positioned shrubbery.<\/p>\n

But with the depravations of the Great Depression, many of the Island\u2019s enticements were shuttered, and with the onset of WWII, even the venerable Viceroy Archie Hotel was torn down for firewood, after serving nobly as an espionage\/finishing school for seducers and seductresses of Nazis.<\/p>\n

With post-war peace came the park bureaucrats, men with a distaste for disorder, men who spent no time outdoors themselves, but who felt that those who did should do so in a barren landscape, the better to be supervised when at leisure.\u00a0 And so the Island was bulldozed and landscaped into a green tabula rasa, a \u2018there\u2019 that once one got to it was so blindingly obvious that the only thing to do was to immediately line up for the next ferry returning to the mainland.<\/p>\n

We see the results today: windswept and cheerless picnics, Sahara-like stretches of bleached grass that fry the brain, inconsolable children drifting miserably inside macabre giant plastic swans, and the tyrannical rule of dozens of the Island\u2019s acres by spiteful Canada Geese.<\/p>\n

I can no longer stand idly by, watching as I do with my Bausch-Lomb binoculars, as the stolid ferries trundle back and forth across the harbour with a monotony not unlike the tedious journeys of 19th century prison ships on their way to Australia, the main difference being the presence of sun-burnt children wearing Batman bathing trunks.<\/p>\n

I have a vision of the Centre Island of the future, a vision so powerful and clear that it came to me with a searing pain in my temple, a small amount of bile in my throat, and a complete set of landscape architecture blueprints in my brain.<\/p>\n

Think skeet shooting.\u00a0 Think nightly re-enactments of the parting of the Red Sea. Think toothless freshwater sharks.\u00a0 Think artificial spelunking. Think barbequed steaks so thick you\u2019d trip over them.<\/p>\n

Think an archipelago of islands of delight so enticing that Venice, Italy will hang its excessively pomaded head in shame.<\/p>\n

I have assembled a group of top men to put forward my plan, and, firstly, to build a meticulously-detailed architectural maquette so life-like and compelling as to render impotent any of my political opponents (so to speak).\u00a0 We\u2019ll draw on the greatest minds the world has to offer, from Butlin\u2019s Holiday Camps<\/a>, to NASA, to Kresge\u2019s, and you\u2019ll begin to see what can be!<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll complete the work in time for Dominion Day in 1975.\u00a0 What can a visitor expect on that glorious day?<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll arrive at the newly re-designed ferry docks, made to resemble the space station from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.\u00a0 There, after a jaunty time spent being interviewed by Liquor Control Board employees, you\u2019ll be escorted on board one of our mammoth canoes \u2013 I\u2019m talking 400-seaters, with on-board washrooms and Fran\u2019s luncheon counters \u2013 and paddled to paradise!<\/p>\n

Upon arrival at Centre Island, you will stare, slack-jawed in wonder, at the Plaza of The Snack Bars \u2013 and its most bejewelled establishment, Lady Eaton\u2019s Fort Pork, where all manner of cuisine, including hot dogs, wieners, franks, frankfurters, sausages and tube steaks, will be piled high. Sated, you can then waddle or be wheeled to the Western Hemisphere\u2019s largest pine tree maze, three acres of coniferous confusion, designed to mimic the hallways of City Hall\u2019s own beloved Department of Human Resources.<\/p>\n

Or cool off in our million-gallon wading pool, shaped like the almost-Great Lake, Lake St. Clair.\u00a0 (But wear your goggles! Chlorine levels will be at DEFCON 3, or yellow, to offset children\u2019s inevitable urine).<\/p>\n

The current \u2018residents\u2019 of Ward\u2019s Island, who I am sure simply missed the final ferry of the night, will be gently whisked to higher ground, i.e. Barrie, to allow for the demolition of their rustic tarpaper shacks, and the erection of the world\u2019s widest tetherball court.<\/p>\n

A human pyramid training school, a suntan lotion sluicing pit, a 1000-seat slide projector theatre, a charades stadium — all this will be yours, dear people of Toronto, and so much more.\u00a0 Foreigners will flock here as well, their journey eased by the extension of the Island Airport runway through the soon-to-be-former Hanlan\u2019s Point beach to allow for landings, and attempted landings, by top-notch Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets!<\/p>\n

How will I\/you pay for all of this? In the fullness of time.<\/p>\n

The cost?\u00a0 No man can say.<\/p>\n

But hey! No man is an island!\u00a0 These things cost cash money, kiddo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDITOR: It’s circa 1973. Bert Xanadu is the Mayor of Toronto and owner of the Imperial Six cinemas on Yonge Street. Mayor Xanadu has been governing from his twitter account over the last two years and now a regular series of posts straight out of 1973 and into the Toronto fray. His first column wasContinue reading “Impressed by Doug Ford’s backroom vision for the Toronto Port Lands? Take a look at Mayor Bert Xanadu’s vision for the Toronto Islands: “The Islands in my Brain.””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4113,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47,20],"tags":[1325,1220,18376,17975,18387,18386,2723,5942,18384,22100,18391,18380,4975,18381,764,9174,18390,18383,426,205,16879,18379,2504,1504,18389,18388,18382,18385,19,420,18378,9131,18377],"class_list":["post-22498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parks","category-urban-design","tag-art-gallery","tag-australia","tag-bath","tag-bert-xanadu","tag-boeing","tag-boeing-747","tag-canada-day","tag-centre-island","tag-department-of-human-resources","tag-editor","tag-excessively-pomaded-head","tag-fort-pork","tag-frederick-law-olmstead","tag-greta-garbo","tag-italy","tag-lady","tag-lake-st-clair","tag-liquor-control-board","tag-mayor","tag-mayor-bert-xanadu","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-plaza-of-the-snack-bars","tag-point-beach","tag-port-lands","tag-red-sea","tag-sahara","tag-sebastian-bergman","tag-suntan","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-islands","tag-uncle-charlies-dominion-nudie-zoopraxographical-hall","tag-venice","tag-viceroy-archie-hotel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nImpressed by Doug Ford's backroom vision for the Toronto Port Lands? 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